The latest Bollywood film to be released, One Two Three, is director Ashwini Dheer’s maiden venture. Made with an ensemble cast, including Suneil Shetty, Paresh rawal, Tusshar Kapoor, Esha Deol, Sameera Reddy and many others, the film is a desperate attempt at comedy through cheesy dialogues and a wafer-thin plot.

The story revolves around a young couple, who accidentally come into possession of valuable diamonds stolen by a mafia don. Now, the couple needs to hide the diamonds from not only the mafia but also a hot-headed woman policeman on their trail. To complicate matters further, enter three characters with the same name – Lakshmi Narayan. Between the confusion of which Lakshmi Narayan is which and where the diamonds are, the movie turns out to be exasperating to sit through.

It isn’t a feeble attempt at comedy. If anything, everyone is trying too hard to make you laugh and hamming all over the place. The pleasant surprise is Suneil Shetty, who takes a break from his macho image to play a lovable geek of sorts and does it well, with great comic timing. Paresh Rawal is disappointing, especially after the quality of work we have come to expect from him. Esha Deol and Tusshar Kapoor need lessons in acting and dialogue delivery and Upen Patel is all but annoying to watch.

Direction is feeble, dialogues are cheesy, the cinematography is patchy and music is passable at best. On the whole, One Two Three appears to be a film made with all the ingredients one believes makes up comedy – but then all the ingredients in one film? And the movie appears as though someone decided on what all should be included in it and then wrote a story to fit in all the components.

If anything saves the film from total disaster, it is the performance of actor Sanjay Misra, with his impeccable comic timing and brilliant dialogue delivery. At least he is one person who is able to get a few laughs from the audience and justifies the “comedy” tag of this film.